


sleep well, beast

by stickyvalentine



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 03, Blood, M/M, Multi, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-25 23:25:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13223442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickyvalentine/pseuds/stickyvalentine
Summary: The heart is smarter than the head, even when it isn't.





	sleep well, beast

**Author's Note:**

> This story addresses/references two rapes that occurred in series canon: Letha Godfrey's and Ashley Valentine's. The people responsible do not suffer adequately for what they did, but neither are they absolved. Otherwise: blood, violence, gore are on par with what's seen in the series.
> 
> This is my attempt to fix the aborted character arc for Peter in season 3 - the story is canon compliant for seasons 1 and 2 and diverges from there.

_  
The heart is smarter than the head, even when it isn’t._  

_-_

 

Roman had asked once if Peter remembered everything from when he was the wolf. He'd made a show of picking something out of his teeth as he asked, which was how Peter knew he'd done something embarrassing, like try to pet Peter after he'd turned.

Roman had spent the early days of their friendship painfully, blatantly embarrassed— about reaching out, and about being obvious about wanting to reach out, which was the basically the same thing.

It wasn’t really an embarrassing question, though. The wolf was wild. He’d never hurt anyone Peter didn't want to hurt but he wasn't much interested in people either. The wolf liked the forest; its paths that were apparent only to something with the right nose. The wolf liked to run, loved the hunt, the hot rush of blood when his jaws snapped shut. The wolf loved freedom. People weren't freedom. They were anchors.

“Sort of,” Peter had answered. “But it's more like, knowing, or feeling, than any specific memory. And it’s stored right down here." He’d grinned and grabbed his cock through his jeans as he spoke. Roman had laughed as he ducked his face into the popped collar of his coat. The movement had exposed the long line of Roman's neck as it curved into the knife’s edge of his jaw and Peter had wondered if he was hiding a blush. They'd flicked their cigarettes and sped off in Roman's gleaming roadster to get into some trouble.

 

That fucking roadster. Peter had loved that car before he'd ever set eyes on a Godfrey. It had been love at first sight, the cherry-red ripeness of it catching his thief's eye as he passed through the parking lot that first day at school, waiting to be plucked by his thief's fingers. Peter didn't jack cars unless it was strictly necessary, but there was something about the open top and the haphazard way it had been parked that called to him. He hadn't known then that he'd be in its passenger seat within the week, smoking and shooting the shit and ignoring the sideways looks from its driver, who was every bit as arrogant and lazily opulent as that blood-red roadster.

It had been the first thing he'd been able to let himself miss, after.

Missing Letha was all he'd done those first weeks on the road-- but missing Letha wasn't something he'd really done. It was something that happened to him. Something he was. All he'd been then was his longing for her, his grief - paralyzed by it as they'd jostled down back roads and slept on shoulders.

The roadster, on the other hand - after a while, he could miss it with a kind of sweetened longing. Particularly after the ten odd times Lynda’s beater broke down on the side - or in the middle - of the road.

The cigarette-and-incense stink of their beat-up old car had always smelled like home to Peter, but then, as he'd sat, empty-eyed and mute while the grief crested and crashed, it had begun to suffocate. He'd longed abruptly for the open top and brash, smooth glide of the roadster, a pang of untainted longing. At least this was a longing for something he could conceivably have again.

Peter had done his best to keep everything besides Letha - who was inescapable - locked up inside with the vargulf, but after that first pang, the most unexpected things would trigger memories and with them would come the missing.

A peal of bashful laughter from another camper or the flicker of a firefly would release a trickle of longing for Shelley. On the full moon, the wolf would turn its nose to scent the air of a foreign forest and miss running through the woods of Hemlock Grove, its night air always rich with blood and power.  

Nights when they'd pull the car up behind some abandoned country estate, Lynda dropping straight into sleep, he'd sit amongst the graffiti and ruin and watch the night sky through the decaying roof. Then there would be Roman, tailing at his heels through the old steel mill, their heads bent together in the school courtyard, drawing curious eyes. Roman. His hands on Roman's shoulders, the fierce delight on his face as Peter looked into it -  _because_  Peter was looking into it. Roman. 

The way he’d been feeling in the weeks since Nadia and Miranda had gone missing was different, amplified by urgency. A longing for something he _might_  never have again, if they couldn’t find her before it was too late. Nadia. When he missed her, her soft, small hands and powdery smell, it was all twined together with Letha's glowing face, and the wild, panicked devastation on Roman's as that fucking dragon had flown away with Nadia. It didn’t paralyze Peter; it mobilized him.

On this one point, he, the wolf, and the vargulf howled in tandem-- they’d rip the world apart to find Nadia.

 

It was Roman who gave voice to the tattooed elephant in the room, as blessedly tactless as ever, late one night or early one morning when they were pouring over tracking data from the Godfrey servers, eyes peeled for any non-aircraft flight patterns. 

“Spivak-- this thing-- it can't fly across an ocean, right?" Peter asked suddenly.

Roman shook his head. "Pryce isn't one hundred per cent sure, but he said based on his biological... fuckery probably not."

"Probably not," Peter echoed. It sounded right, but Peter couldn’t quite shake the frisson of panic that seized him at the thought of Nadia on another continent. "If he's gone too far — if we can't get to Nadia, if anything happens to her," Peter paused and, with a surprised tilt of his head, added belatedly, "Or Miranda.

“To her or Miranda."

"Miranda," Roman was the echo this time. Her name landed heavily in the extended, guilty silence that followed. Roman’s eyes were still on the reports when he asked, "Do you-- miss her?"

 _Did_  he miss Miranda? The fact that he hadn't considered it before then probably answered Roman's question well enough, but Peter couldn’t bring himself to say it - especially not when she could be the only thing protecting Nadia from a fucking  _dragon_.

"I hope she's okay," Peter said instead. It was wholly true, at least. "I hope we find her before anything bad happens, but--" He trailed off as Roman looked up from the desk. 

But the whole, entire truth was that by the morning after they'd all ended up in bed together, he’d been long past missing Miranda.

-

Peter wasn't a learner. He felt things or didn't, knew things or didn't. The transition from feeling to knowing was hard to track - and anyway, he rarely tried. He didn't traffic in light-bulb moments.

He’d felt Roman’s desire like a physical weight since the first time they spoke, had recognized its smell since he’d listened at a bathroom door that first day of school. His own had been slower, had unfurled in a surprised burst when Miranda had taken them both to bed.

Miranda had kept herself wedged safely between them, but in the tangle of three bodies, things happened— things  _brushed_. 

It had all started off competitive, first racing to and then taking turns trying to bring Miranda off, but inevitably devolved into something more frantic and sloppy. Peter had found himself watching the pale, lean lines of Roman’s body, the tendons of his shoulders, his neck tense and taut. His big hands trembling at the end of those slim wrists, like a pup that promised to grow into a big dog. 

Roman had been rather less confident in bed than Peter would’ve guessed, his breathing verging on hyper-ventilation, wavering between showy power moves and tentative grasping. Peter  _knew_  Roman had a lot of sex— they couldn’t go out for a drink without running into three girls he’d fucked. It didn’t make sense.

Peter had been working his fingers inside Miranda and rutting lazily between her clenched thighs, one of her own hands working at Roman, when he heard her gasp and felt two fingers of her other hand slide in alongside his. They worked together like that, his thumb against her clit, her breathing speeding up till she was clenching around both their fingers. She came quietly, shuddered a little against him, then drew their slick, twined fingers out of her and right into Roman’s open, panting mouth. 

Roman’s eyes were raw and glassy as they darted helplessly toward Peter's-- Peter realized in a rush that he’d been watching Roman that entire time and this was the first time Roman had looked back. Roman's nerves, his shaking hands, took on their true form: a concerted effort in not looking at Peter.

Peter remembered the way Roman’s eyes had felt on the side of his face, on the back of his neck. Inside, Roman was just as hot and wet as Miranda. Peter felt Roman’s tongue move as he groaned, urgent and muffled by Peter’s fingers in his mouth. Peter's breath punched out of him as he came, shocked. It went out of him like he’d been elbowed in the gut.

He dropped Roman’s gaze as he extracted his fingers from Roman’s sticky mouth and his cock from between Miranda’s sticky thighs. He lay on his back, trying to catch back his lost breath, half-expecting a jibe from Roman, who he watched still out of the corner of one eye, about being a quick draw. But Roman said nothing. He and Miranda busied themselves with the business of fucking properly. His mouth was shiny and almost bruised-looking.

Peter waited politely for them to finish before he went to the bathroom to clean himself up, and returned with a damp cloth. He wiped Miranda down tenderly and then turned to Roman and stopped— a bridge too far yet. Roman reached his hand out for the cloth. They didn’t touch.

He got up to gather this clothes, not fleeing, exactly, and Miranda caught his hand. “Stay,” she said. He looked down at her hand on his— the same hands that had just— and hesitated.

“Stay,” Roman said, his voice careful and even.

Peter looked up. The flush was still high on Roman's cheeks. His eyes were shiny in the dark, but laser focused - on Peter. Certain.

What else could he do? Peter had shrugged and he had stayed.

- 

The dreams were a good reason for putting up with Roman, but they weren’t the whole reason. Nor was Lynda’s first friend excuse. Peter  _had_  had friends before, but they were like him. Romani travellers or trailer park kids, kids who grew up with dirty hands and skinned knees. Kids who had to fight to make the world give them anything, who got by because no one noticed their small cons, their smaller dreams.

Roman Godfrey, blessed with money and power and cursed with Olivia, had known his whole life that whatever he wanted would eventually be his. As he’d come of age, that had become impossibly literal, a step beyond even what most American princes could expect. He had only to speak something to will it-- his every dream would be reality. And Peter shared his dreams.

The truth for Peter began as a feeling. It sat in his stomach, his balls, his bones, long before it bloomed into conscious thought. He’d still been feeling it the next morning-- not quite ready to think it-- when Miranda and the shared dream had blown everything up. But he was thinking it now. 

He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything about Miranda either. What he said was: “Destiny and Andreas got engaged.”

“Shee-it,” Roman said, but he was smiling.

Peter echoed him, returned the smile. Then: “Do you mind if I crash with you for a while? Give the lovebirds some space?”

“Mi casa ’n shit.”

Peter met his gaze steadily. "I'm gonna go by Destiny's and pick up my crap. She's looking into a tracking ritual so I'm gonna help her out with that. But I'll be by later tonight."

"See you at home," Roman said-- a little breathlessly, Peter thought. 

 

When Destiny had come home, she'd found Peter in her living room, shoving his clothes into two duffel bags. He told her he was going to stay with Roman. He'd said it exactly like that: _I'm going to stay with Roman._

Peter wasn't sure exactly how he'd expected Destiny to take the news, but it hadn't been with a slow blink and an even glare. The first thing she said was, "People don't change, Peter."

He could've argued with that, could've said:  _Roman did. And so do I, every full moon._  But all he'd said was: "We're not people."

There'd been enough lying. Or maybe not, because at Destiny's stricken expression, he'd added: “I'm just giving you guys some space. Roman has room.”

“No way," Destiny had said, and socked him in the shoulder. It hurt. "Just because I’m engaged doesn’t mean you have to move out!"

“You need to make your own life. It’s time for you to be happy. You deserve it.” The stuff he'd practiced on the way there - all true, but not all honest.

"There's room here, Peter" Destiny had said then. "There's always room for you, Peter. Always." It had sounded more like a plea than an offer. His big, strong cousin had seemed very small just then. Small-- and scared, which only made him more certain than ever about leaving.

And now here he was. In the front entrance of Roman Godfrey’s hideous, hyper-modern home.

The richest man in the state had all his lights shut off. Peter was pretty sure the heat wasn’t on, either. Ambient light from the moon lit up his breath as he waited - for something.

“Any luck with the ritual?" The voice drifted out of the dim living room. It was a little strained, almost flat. The sound of it settled something in Peter - and woke something else up.

He knew it then: he belonged here, in the dark. With Roman. 

Peter sat down heavily on the leather couch. Roman had two fingers of scotch poured for himself in a tumbler on the glass coffee table. Peter drained it, more conscious than ever of Roman's eyes on him, and of his steady, heavy silence. His waiting.

As the whiskey burned its magic down his throat, Peter tried to imagine Roman waiting for anything else in his life, of wanting anything else without outright demanding - or taking it. He couldn't.

"I get it now." Peter made himself look Roman in the face - the open, brightness of his patience - and pushed on. "Now I know. Now I'm ready. Roman--"

He'd never know what he'd been about to say, because Roman swallowed it with his lush, seeking mouth. The sensation was both familiar and unfamiliar, a magnification of what he'd felt that night with Miranda, sucked right from the source. Roman fed his own desire back to him through his mouth; he was choking on it, drowning in it, in the span of Roman's big hands on his jaw, his neck. The stretch of Roman's long, monstrous body over his on the couch should've had the vargulf in fits, but it was curiously quiet. The whole room was quiet, in fact, which made the wet noises their mouths were making sound deafening and obscene.

The boys like Roman, before Roman, had always seen Peter as something they could get away with. It was what made it so satisfying to pocket their wallets as he let them get him off behind gas stations.

This didn't feel like stealing. It felt like surrender.

Something buzzed between them, once, then repeatedly. "Destiny," Peter groaned into Roman's mouth. 

Roman untangled himself from Peter melodramatically, rolling his eyes and practically flinging himself against the opposite end of the couch.

Peter's voice was raspy when he spoke around his smile. "She, uh, said she'd call when she knew more about the ritual."

Just like that, Roman was serious, posture tight and upright, face focused — his traitorous mouth still lush and wet-looking.

Peter coughed to clear his throat as he answered the phone. “Hey D. I'm with-- Roman's here. You're on speaker. What do you got?"

"Lynda's friend got back to me. She said this is tracking ritual surefire. Guaranteed to find anyone anywhere, no matter what dragons are guarding ‘em"

He watched Roman's face open up with relief as Destiny spoke and thought: _This is why. This is how I know._

“But you're not gonna like it. Some paternalistic blood magic shit means that we need blood from Nadia's father."

Roman put his hands over his face so quickly that Peter didn't even see his expression change, but the rest of his body said enough. 

"Thanks D. I'm gonna call you back."

Roman stayed hunched over on the far end of the couch, motionless. Peter couldn’t see his face when he spoke: "This will work? If we do this we can get Nadia back?"

“Yeah, this means Nadia’s alive, but we can’t track her without her father’s blood.” Peter waited, breath held, and when Roman still hadn’t moved, he began to speak. “Okay. What do we know about her dad? Did you ever get DNA tests done? Did Letha mention anything besides that angel bullshit? Maybe we can--"

"I am." Roman said from within the spread of his palms. He sounded wrecked, and Peter wasn't sure if it was from the phone call or from something Peter had just done.

He waited for Roman to finish his thought but Roman said nothing else. They sat in silence for a few beats, but Peter could feel the miles ticking away. Now that he knew they could find Nadia, even these seconds of lost time were unbearable. Why wouldn't Roman--

"I am," Roman said again, and then heavily, ruinously finished the sentence, "Nadia's father."

The words were incomprehensible at first. Nonsense. But Peter had never had any special love for words anyway. He read in faces and bodies, and both of Roman's were screaming.

_Letha._

The glass coffee table upended, crashed onto the floor in a flurry of glass and whiskey. He couldn’t remember doing it but he must have, because Roman was just now looking up from his hands. His mouth, frowning grotesquely, still looked freshly kissed. Peter was going to be sick. His body stood and his boots crunched over shards of glass as he headed for the door.

The wolf was thrashing about, desperate to tear its way through his skin and take Roman’s throat. Peter held it down with everything he had, every ounce of rage, horror, disgust, devastation. He focused on maintaining control, on getting out of the house and _away_.

“ — I couldn't help it” Roman babbled at his back. He’d been speaking for some time, as Peter stood there, hand on the doorknob, fighting with the wolf. ”She made me. Olivia. She did some Upir shit to me and I didn't even remember ‘til after Letha was--"

Until after Letha was _dead._

Peter had watched Roman care for the last living piece of the girl he'd loved— because Roman loved her too, he'd thought. He'd watched Roman dedicate himself to something selfless, watched him be better and he'd fallen--

He spun to face Roman.

Roman's face had always been an open book for anyone willing to read it, but abyss-gazing had its risks and so Peter resisted doing so as much as any teenaged boy utterly unaccustomed to resisting his impulses could be expected. Extended exposure to Roman Godfrey had been one long exercise in resisting that impulse and Peter found himself just so fucking tired. He looked up into Roman's face.

“I never told you this but, I thought of you," Peter said. “While I was gone" 

Roman's face emptied with shock. It clearly wasn't the shove or the  _fuck you_  he'd been bracing himself for. A hint of abashed hope crept in through his wide eyes, the softening of his mouth. Even in the midst of his fury, Peter wanted to bite down on it all, taste that foul Godfrey blood.

“When me and Lynda were driving, we'd pass these huge abandoned buildings. Decrepit mansions, empty factories, all over-grown and left to rot. The kind not even travelers will kip down in. Too much asbestos, too close to collapsing. Not safe for anyone, except maybe vermin. We'd pass those buildings, and just like that, you'd spring to mind."

Peter watched the words land as they fell out of his mouth, all casual. He watched the hopeful laxity on Roman's face shrink and vanish. His nostrils flaring, his mouth contorting as he tried to mask it under a sneer, but Peter was rapt. He reads every single thing and it just made him hungry.

"So what, you're just gonna run away again? You're gonna leave-- leave Nadia, you fucking coward? Don't--"

He reached for Peter, who swung his arm violently out of reach, his own muscles taut from the strain of trying not to rip Roman's throat out. Roman flinched.

Ironic-- the only time he came close to being as strong as Roman was as the vargulf, and even then, Roman had torn it clean in half. To get to him. 

"If you touch me right now we're both gonna end up dead. And then who's gonna save her? Olivia?" He spat her name at Roman, wanting another flinch, but not getting one. Roman's expression had turned stony. "No. I can't abandon Nadia or, or Letha like that. I’ll help Destiny prep the ritual, but if I see you for any other reason than finding...  _your daughter_ , I will _kill_  you.” Peter said all this and left him.

The vargulf trembled in him, begging to turn back and tear Roman's throat out – or _something_. The wolf wanted to run. And Peter? Peter got into the truck. Turned it on with shaking hands. Tore out of Roman's drive way. And made it all of two miles before veering over and dry heaving on the shoulder of the road. 

 

Peter stood on the steps outside Destiny's apartment for a good ten minutes, gathering up the calm and courage to admit how goddamned stupid he’d been.

He breathed, unclenched his fists, breathed, shut his eyes. The air was cold, his exhalations curled visibly through the night. Dust lit up by streetlights. Deep down in him was a fury, and even deeper down, agony.

_Nothing to be done now._

When he slipped inside the apartment, the sight of Destiny and Andreas curled around each other on the couch made him want to slip right back out.

The living room was orangey bright and just on the right side of too warm. Peter had his bags with him, and in dropping them by his boots, alerted Destiny and Andreas, who came out of their curl slowly, cozily.

Destiny's hand was still carding through Andreas’ hair when she began to ask, "What's--"

Something must have broken across Peter's face, because she drew herself off the couch and toward him in seconds. He didn't open his mouth - if he did, a howl might have clawed its way out.

"Oh Peter," Destiny said, and rested her hand against his cold, wet cheek. 

It wasn't until they'd killed a shelf of beer between them that she began to prod him for details. "What happened?”

Peter squinted, already blessedly bleary, “You were right.”

She asked again, softer: “What did he do?"

Peter opened his mouth then, to let the whole horror come tumbling out, but something stoppered it at the back of throat.

 _You were right. Roman didn’t change,_  he started to say. But Roman had changed - and then he'd changed again.

Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe Roman was who he'd always been, a fun house mirror of a person, every mirror you looked into just endlessly reflecting another, distorted version of him. You could smash one and the crack would show up in another, but you couldn't shatter them all. Peter ached with the urge to destroy something shining.

Peter had always been steady and sure-- until Roman, who was constantly flickering in and out of moods, personalities; he was a spoiled prince, a reluctant hero, a self-sacrificing penitent, a monster-- until the vargulf.

It had been love, and now it couldn't be. And who was that love for anyway? The Roman who left Lynda to rot in jail? The Roman who pulled Peter out of the vargulf? The Roman who fucked around? The Roman who touched Peter like he'd never even been kissed before? The Roman who kissed Peter. The Roman who raped Letha.

Which one? The Roman who told Peter, and the Roman who didn't.

In the end all he said was, “He's Nadia’s father," and then chugged the rest of his beer, grasping for oblivion.

The rest of the night blurred into a clean blackness, until Peter woke, mouth tacky and pillow wet. He started up, his stomach lurching, and then dropped back down into a wet patch of his own drool.

Now, awoken by the gentle snick of the front door shutting, the day before came rushing back - rising in his stomach, into his throat, and right out his mouth as he hunched over the toilet.

“Andreas just left on that Buffalo job," Destiny said from the doorway, her voice pitched sympathetically low. It did no good - any sound was agony to Peter right now - but Peter felt a rush of gratitude nonetheless.

If Lynda was across an ocean, at least he had Destiny.

"I'm pretty sure I know what you're gonna say but I still have to ask. Do you still want me to work this? To find Nadia?"

It wasn't about _want_. "I have to," Peter said into the toilet. "I can't leave her. She's Letha's."

Neither of them said it, but the truth hovered between in the stale air of the bathroom.  _She's Roman's too._

-

In the dream, he was the wolf and the wolf ran.

The grove was dark and chilled, but the wolf's blood ran hot in him. The death sounds of winter sang through the night and the wolf howled along with them. A night such as this should have delighted the wolf, but he was not delighted. He was chased.

Over every creek, under every felled tree, the beast chased him. The wolf heard its panting, could scent its foul breath on the wind, but did not look back. To slow down was to succumb to it, and the wolf would not do that willingly.

But even the wolf could only run so long before tiring, and the sun would soon be limning the horizon. He had not fed or even hunted - the two rawest joys of being a wolf - he had only fled.

The wolf was, he knew now, being herded inexorably. The vargulf would have its prey. There was no hope of flight, only the rapidly encroaching jaws that would swallow the wolf whole.

-

As had become his habit in the past few weeks, Peter woke in the dark of Destiny's living room, covered in sweat and short of breath. It was just shy of dawn - which was also par for the course - but where there had traditionally been a still quiet to calm Peter when he woke, there was now an insistent buzzing. His pillow was vibrating.

Stifling a groan, Peter pulled the phone out from under his head and answered it - too nightmare-addled to consider that the only people he'd actually want to talk to on his cell were asleep in the bedroom.

"Hello?"

Through the static of the line, nothing. Or something: a wet breathing.

"Lynda?" Peter said, finally opening his eyes to squint at the luminescent screen of his phone. He realized three things simultaneously--

One: his phone was about to die.

Two: he'd gotten just shy of 3 hours sleep.

Three: Roman Godfrey was on the line

"Christ," Roman said as Peter put the phone back to his ear slowly, horror mounting in him - the remnants of the nightmare spilling into his waking life. "Peter, you can't--"

Roman kept muttering in fits and starts. His speech slurred, either from high emotion or inebriation - knowing Roman, probably both. Nothing he said made any sense.

Peter knew he should hang up the phone without saying anything. He should change his number. He should go out into the street and drive his truck over the phone so Roman could never call it again

Instead: "The fuck do you want, Roman?"

More wet breathing, possibly even a hiccup. Peter’s ear that wasn’t pressed against the phone was pricked for any signs of Destiny stirring. "I want-- Peter, you don't get it. I didn't know, I couldn't stop it--"

"I'm hanging up, " Peter said tightly.

"No, no, you have to listen. Jesus Christ, just let me explain. Olivia made it me do it. She wiped my fucking memory. You know how much I loved Letha – “

What did love even mean to Roman, whose father had blown his own brains out in front of him, whose mother equated it with possession?

"I wouldn't have done that to her, Peter. You have to believe me. I didn't even know it happened until you were already gone."

That was the trick of it, wasn't it? Even if what Roman was saying was somehow, impossibly true, he'd still known the truth the entire time Peter was back in town. And lied until it didn't serve him anymore.

"I want to believe you," Peter whispered into the phone, his voice cracking with the shame of it. "I want-- but it's always like this with you."

Roman made a high, wounded noise over the phone.

Fury pumped hot into him then. How could Roman do all he had done and still have the nerve to act like Peter was hurting him?

Peter felt abruptly more awake than he had in weeks. "Jesus Christ. Lynda was right about you. Destiny. Everyone-- you don't know how to be better. Maybe it's not your fault, but now we all have to fucking live with it."

It came out of Peter in a rush, his voice raising without his ken, and then suddenly he was left holding a dead phone. For one hot, furious second, he thought Roman had hung up on him - unfathomable - but his battery had run out, and his breathing was loud and rapid in the returning silence. He listened again for the steady sound of Destiny's sleep but didn't hear it. How much had she overheard?

Not that it mattered, really. Things with Roman were always ending - she knew that by now.

The last time he'd checked, it had been 5:13 AM. Peter got up to put on coffee. 

-

He dreamt infrequently, but regularly now. Always the same dream. He was the wolf - no, he was the vargulf. Chasing prey through the grove, the hunt singing in his veins. His jaws closed around flesh, bones snapped between them. Victory. But instead of feasting, he dragged the body. 

The vargulf dragged the body through the woods in his drooling jaw. The trees thinned and then parted to reveal its destination: an expensively groomed backyard off a cold, grey house. Just this side of too small to be a mansion.

There was a door around the back, an empty space where Peter knew a welcome mat should go. The wolf didn't know any better, or the vargulf didn't care, and dropped its catch on the white stone. It steamed a little in the chilly pre-dawn, somehow.

The vargulf stood, panting in anticipation, its eyes fixed on the door.

-

The only things hung on the closest clothesline were bed linens. Peter snatched a Superman sheet, wound it round his waist, snagged a pair of crusty work boots off a back porch, and made his loping way back to Destiny's. 

Fucking frost. He couldn't remember the last time he'd stayed somewhere up north through the winter for this exact reason.

It wasn't like with Lynda, when they'd always kipped near the woods so Peter could turn back just steps from home. The walk was a good quarter of an hour - longer when he had to stick to alleys due to bed clothing issues - and he was achier than usual. Had the wolf run farther? Had it left the woods?

He was staggering up the steps to Destiny's door, his mood unexpectedly foul after a good moon, when the door swung open of its own volition - to reveal Roman Godfrey.

Peter tried to curse, if not creatively then profusely, but all that came out was a strangled croak.

He cleared his throat violently, clenching his fist on the iron railing of the stairs. “The fuck are you doing here?" He rasped.

He ached all over, with exhaustion and now fury. Roman, his lower lip pressed beneath his teeth in surprise, looked much the same as he had when Peter had seen him three weeks ago - expensive, young, cruel. He'd probably look just the same for another 50 years, at least.

Destiny appeared then in the space between them. "I needed his blood for the ritual.” She read Peter’s expression and winced: “And I didn’t think you’d be back yet.”

The wolf, the vargulf had curled up peacefully inside him, but the human Peter rankled at the implication. The only reason Roman was even necessary here was because of what he'd done to Letha. "Well, I'm back now. You got the blood?" Destiny nodded shortly. "Great, then he can fuck off."

Roman's hunched shoulders barely moved as he shrugged, and they passed each other on the stairs in a kind-of slow motion born of Peter’s shock and exhaustion.

Peter released his grip on the railing as he took a step and his worn body swayed traitorously at the loss of support.

Roman's hands reached out, but just before they made contact with the chilled skin of Peter's shoulders, Peter jerked back and _snarled_ \- a real one that shocked him a little - “Don't."

Roman still managed, after all he'd done, to somehow look surprised, even a little wounded. 

This close, he wasn't unchanged, after all, but sallow and worn looking. His skin had always been pale, verging on translucent, but the dark circles under his eyes were stark and purple. 

Peter started to wonder if Roman had gone back to the treatments and then abruptly remembered that it wasn't his problem anymore. 

"I meant what I said. I don't want to see you until it's time to get Nadia," Peter said. "I don't need... anything bringing the vargulf out."

"Then maybe it should stop fucking showing up at my house." Roman snapped. 

Peter’s fists clenched around the railing again. His entire body went tight.

"I know it's you. You're lucky I don't put up an electric fence." Roman was really warming up to it - he must have caught Peter's shock. "Seriously what the fuck is that? All the fucking mangled animals at my back door? Is it a threat? A promise?"

_An offering?_

Peter's mind scrambled for an explanation - the wolf dreams were shared somehow, one of their prophetic things - but instead he felt it - in his gut, in his balls. The vargulf had left those animals for Roman. Peter had.

For Roman - whose bare hands had ripped the vargulf clear in half just to get to Peter. 

There was nothing the vargulf respected more than strength, than a kindred brutality. 

For Roman - who raped Letha.

Peter met Destiny's eyes over Roman's shoulder and saw the same creeping horror he felt crossing her face. 

The truth: Roman tearing Peter out of the vargulf skin had saved his life but it hadn’t solved the problem. It had created a completely new one.

Peter leaned abruptly over the railing and retched. Out of view of Destiny and Roman, he saw some blood in the bile. He felt a hand ghost over his hunched shoulders, but when he righted himself, Roman's hands were shoved in his pockets and he wouldn't meet Peter's eyes.

"The blood moon's tomorrow night," Destiny said finally. "You'll hear from us after the ritual's done."

Roman nodded once and continued his way down the steps.

Peter stayed where he was, shivering, until he was confident Roman wouldn't see Destiny help him the rest of the way up.

"What are you looking at," Peter said, grasping for wry, but coming up short, if Destiny's sad eyebrows were anything to go by. 

Her voice was dry when she muttered "Just admiring the outfit," but her hands were strong and full of warm life as they held him up.

 

When he woke on the couch later, mouth tacky and stomach grumbling, it was dark again.

Destiny knelt in the middle of the floor, her shut eyelids and her raised palms dabbed with what must have been Roman's blood.

He thought about moving, about the pork he smelled waiting in the fridge, the water waiting in the tap, but he was warm under the scratchy wool blanket. Didn't want to risk interrupting Destiny.

"I know you're awake," Destiny said, unmoved. "You always startle out of sleep, lately. You know - when you actually sleep."

"Sorry," Peter said, unclear on what, if anything, he was really apologizing for. He sat up, his stomach crashing around in his gut. "I thought we couldn't do this until tomorrow."

"Dry run." Destiny sighed as she stood, shaking her limbs out. "I've only got one shot at this for real."

Later, when they were inhaling pork and potatoes, Destiny set down her fork. Still chewing, she said, "Have you thought about what you're gonna do when you get Nadia back?" Her tone was measured – rehearsed.

"What?" Peter said, his mouth a mash of meat.

 "I bet Roman has," she said coolly, picking up her fork again. "The state he's in now, if you actually got some sleep, I bet you could take him."

Swallowing was hard, but he managed it. "What do you--"

"Come on, Peter, you saw him. He looks like the living dead. He practically fainted when I drew some blood. He obviously hasn't been feeding."

Peter shrugged, "Pryce rigged up some artificial... blood farm thing for him."

Destiny picked up her knife too, and began sawing at her pork chop. "That's not enough."

Destiny had cooked his chop ultra rare, just how he’d always liked it. His mouth watered as he chewed - it could’ve been rarer. “What?” he said again.

"All the lore on Upir says it's not the blood. Well, it's not _just_ the blood. Upir can survive on blood alone, but its strength comes from live feeding - it drains the life with the blood."

That explained why the synthetic shit wasn't cutting it for Roman.

"What about... animals?"

"Not enough life, I guess. Upir are made to take human life." She looked Peter steadily in the eye as she spoke. "Just something to keep in mind for tomorrow"

_The life with the blood._

-

The blood that trailed in the snow behind the vargulf was black in the dim light of pre-dawn.

The doe had fled, not fought, and so the vargulf was not quite sated yet, but an urge greater than hunger drove it now.

The trees were thinning, but the sky was lightening. The vargulf increased its pace as much as was possible with a not-quite dead catch clenched between its teeth. There wasn't much night left.

There now, was the great ugly house, all hard angles and cold stone. The goal was in sight. The vargulf made its way across the back lawn at a steady lope and dropped the doe on the back step. The black blood seeped into the dusting of snow that covered the concrete, caught the vargulf's eye and nose, gave it pause. It drooled.

And then the glass door swung open soundlessly. Out of the darkness within the door frame emerged a black pyjama-clad Upir, its face drawn and its feet bare.

The Upir spoke, meaningless noise. When the vargulf didn't react, the Upir screamed something; a sound ripped from just behind the sternum. 

The vargulf did not run back to the copse of trees where the man's discarded clothes lay. It did not freeze. It waited, eyes fixed, and watched as the Upir dropped slowly to its knees.

They stared at one another, two hungry predators, for a long moment. Then the Upir’s face crumpled, mouth distended. It lowered its long neck to the carcass, and pressed its teeth to the raw flesh, breaking eye contact only when its eyes shut as the thrill of the feed took it over.

The vargulf felt the change coming. The man fought its way back through the skin. It was too late now to flee for privacy. The vargulf spent its last seconds of supremacy watching the doe die.

The sun rose.

By the time Roman paused to catch his breath, and looked up from where he was crouched over the deer's corpse, Peter was naked and shivering on his snowy lawn.

Roman flinched. Peter couldn't stop flinching.

Roman's eyes did what they always when he was a witness to the change; wandered, wondered. Lingered. His entire face up to the tip of his nose was a swathe of blood.

"Shee-it," he said, and then flinched again.

"Shee-it," Peter echoed, his human voice shredded.

 

Peter sat again on the fine leather couch in Roman Godfrey's dark sitting room. He was wrapped in a throw from off the back of the couch, still shivering slightly.The glass coffee table had not been replaced, but the meagre light that shone in from the dawn caught on a shard trapped under the foot of a chair.

Roman had disappeared in search of clothes, and returned looking fresh-faced and awake. As he handed Peter a bundled of clothing, he avoided Peter's eyes, which afforded Peter the safe opportunity to note the slight pinkness around Roman's mouth, and to wonder whether Roman had scrubbed too hard or not hard enough.

In the bathroom, Peter resisted the shower with great difficulty. He remembered it well - perfect heat controls, ideal water pressure, the steam boxed up within glass walls. Instead, he ran his hands under the tap, slowly increasing the temperature of the water, and then splashed his face and hair with cold water.

He looked up into the mirror.

The clothes Roman had given him were predictably, comically long on him. The black sweater felt like it was likely the most expensive thing he'd ever worn, and the workout pants pooled at his feet, but they were both blessedly warm.

Peter looked... like a version of himself, as described by someone who had only met him in passing - hair askew, scruff verging on beard, dressed in someone else's clothes.

Peter considered the bathroom door, which he had carefully locked. He longed to open it and take the stairs right down to the front door, and out onto the long road into town. But his boots, phone, wallet were all at Destiny's.

When he opened the bathroom door, Roman was standing at the bottom of his steps in his winter coat, twirling his keys around his pointer finger. 

There was the feeling again, that settling in Peter’s gut.

 

It was, naturally, Roman who broke the heavy silence that had settled in the car on the drive back to Destiny’s. Peter had felt Roman's eyes slide over and off him in the moments leaning up to it. It was a familiar feeling - and action; Peter himself had tried to read Roman’s mind in the same way many times in those first months, when it felt like they were always tearing onto and pulling off of roads.

"I've got a helicopter," Roman blurted.

Peter turned to look at him full on then, incredulity making his face blank.

Roman grimaced. "I mean I've got one ready, for after the ritual - wherever we need to go. Pryce says he can fly it, so it'll all be off-books. They won't see us coming."

"In a helicopter..." Huge blades, blowing air, making noise.

"You've never seen a helicopter like this before," Roman said, that familiar smugness creeping back in.

"Are you gonna be ready?" Peter asked with some difficulty. He turned back to the window. 

"Me? I'm fighting fucking fit." Roman took a left turn - he was taking the long way around town, rather than through it. 

Peter chanced a look. The purple shadows under Roman's eyes had faded to grey, but they weren't gone entirely. He wondered when the last time Roman had fed on a living thing - before the doe - was, but couldn't bring himself to ask

"What about you, werewolf boy?" Roman turned, caught him staring.

Peter gave the only answer he could think of: "I think... the vargulf likes it. What you did, what you are. That's why... the animals..."

Roman looked away first, shifting in his seat. They pulled up in front of Destiny's place.

It was still early. Destiny would be inside, meditating, gathering strength; whatever concoction she needed for the ritual bubbling on a burner. He could slip in and shower before she even knew he was there.

"Destiny says the moon should rise just before 5. She'll do the ritual and then we can track Nadia.”

He saw Roman’s nod from the corner of his eye, his own eyes concentrated on the pattern he was tracing in the condensation on the car window as he spoke. An L.

"You should be here for it." Peter continued, to his own surprise.

Roman blinked repeatedly, a rapid fluttering of lashes. He wasn't wearing the black leather gloves he often wore for driving. His knuckles were pale as they clenched and unclenched on the steering wheel. The engine was still running, pumping gusts of hot air into the car.

"I'll be there. Pryce will have the helicopter ready." Roman was working on controlling his face, but Peter could see something dawning on it anyway. Some gratitude or hope.

Well, that was Roman's problem to deal with, not his.

Peter nodded absently as he stepped out the car, his mind already working on selling this to Destiny.

"Get some rest, Peter," Roman said, his face suddenly open with worry, right as Peter was shutting the door. "You look like shit."

The door slammed shut. 

 

Destiny was less than impressed with his half-true answer (" _I was with Roman. He's... got a helicopter._ ") and even less impressed with the news that Roman would be joining them.

"You didn't give a single thought to how having him here could fuck with the energy? Your weird shit, plus the way I feel about him? You know I only have one shot at this."

"He's her father," Peter said feebly. He hadn't made it to the shower yet. Destiny's concern outweighed her concentration, it turned out.

At least he'd managed to slip on his boots by the door before she noticed the slippers Roman had given him.

Destiny gave him a skeptical once over and then sighed hugely. "Fine. But he's your responsibility. And I don't want either of you actually in the room when I do it."

 

This compromise was how Peter, now freshly showered and fitfully rested, wound up crowded into Destiny's bedroom with Roman Godfrey. They could hear chanting, or something like chanting that came from the throat rather than the tongue, and the occasional thump - Peter started each time it happened, tempted to rush into the living room to check, against Destiny's specific instructions.

It was dark in the bedroom, the air heavy with incense. If they crowded together near the door they could catch a glimpse of her bent head, her heaving, curved back. 

Roman was still wearing his winter coat, but he didn't feel especially warm where the wool pressed again Peter's arm, bare in a ratty t-shirt. Peter's own body was uncomfortably hot, the still-damp hair at the back of his neck the only thing cooling him. 

He itched to get out of here, away from Roman's breath against the top of his ear as they jostled for a vantage point. The vargulf needed to run and tear and bite, and Peter needed some fresh air.

Thumping again. Peter surged forward despite himself. Roman pulled him back, a hand on the bare skin of Peter's arm. Peter's body let itself be pulled, for just a moment, until he and Roman both froze with the realization that the last time they’d touched was that night in Roman’s house. This was rapidly followed by the realization of the last time they’d been in a bedroom together.

Destiny howled again in the living room.

As Roman's hand fell away, Peter wasn’t sure if he'd shrugged it off; if it was him or Roman. He dropped down to sit on Destiny's bed, so goddamned tired, and rested his face in his hands, shoulders curled in close to his neck. If Roman wasn't here, he'd just -

Everything, _everything_ brought to mind the last time he'd touched Roman. The last time Roman had touched him. 

Nothing had ever made him more tired than the realization of how much and how little had changed since he'd sat on Roman's couch, open and ready.

Improbably light footsteps on the carpet. Roman came to stand in front of Peter.

One final, resounding thump, and Destiny's shrieking died down to a murmur.

Peter dropped his hands from his face and looked up. Roman's mouth was open. He was breathing shallowly, eyes fixed on Peter. Right on the verge of-

“It's done," Destiny croaked from the living room. Her voice was worn and wise.

All at once, Peter's exhaustion fell away, replaced by a roar of adrenaline. The hunt sang in his blood. He made to get up, but Roman was immovable, still leaning into his space.

"Don't turn. Not unless you have to,” Roman said, his face close and his voice quiet in the dark. "I don't want to have to tear you apart again."

Destiny appeared then, in the doorway to her bedroom. She was smeared with Roman's blood and covered in sweat, but grinning radiantly. In her hand, something small and glowing a deep burnt orange, like a coal, pulsed.

Destiny kissed Peter’s cheek as she pressed the coal into his open hands. “Go get your girl."

 

Destiny's coal didn't look like much, but when Peter held it, an overwhelming feeling of being tugged came over him- an endless pulling in the direction of Nadia. He managed to resist the pull for the time it took for Roman to drive them to his helicopter, which as advertised, was unlike any Peter had seen before. It was a sleek, tactical thing, likely purchased illegally from some foreign military. 

Once they were in the sky, Peter took a shaky breath and tossed the coal out of the helicopter door. Roman looked from Peter to the coal, aghast, as it shot off like a flare and Pryce, calm and steady at the controls, took after it.

As they flew north, Peter thought about what Destiny had said at dinner the night before. _Could_ he take Nadia? She was legally Roman’s, thanks to that forged birth certificate. Could he overpower Roman if it came down to it? How far would he have to go with Nadia to escape Roman's reach? If he joined Lynda in the old country would they be safe?

All the questions were mere distractions from the truth he felt, deep down, all over: Roman would only be separated from Nadia in death.

The helicopter whirred above highway, forests, farmland, more farmland - they must be somewhere over Canada by now. However Pryce and Roman had cleared that probably had something to do with the stealth aircraft they were currently flying.

The coal, an orange beacon in the dark, dipped sharply over yet more forests - the swathes of trees skeletal in the pre-spring. Peter could, through the light of that red moon, make out a lone dirt road. The bird followed the beacon down.

On the ground, Roman was antsy, verging on panicked as the beacon zipped off into the trees.

"It's a blood reunion thing," Peter reminded him. "It can't reunite you with Nadia if it loses you."

Heedless, Roman took off into the forest, without a thanks or even a glance back at Pryce. 

"You'd better catch him before he gets himself killed," Pryce said drily.

"He's not my problem."

Pryce’s mouth twitched. "Isn't he?"

The beacon led them a good half hour through the forest to what looked like it had been a cushy private school - a boarding school, if the rural property was anything indication. 

There were four buildings: a single story longhouse, a two-storied dorm building, a garage around back of it, and a big-ass church.

Roman slowed his pace enough for Peter to catch up. 

He turned to look at Peter. "Are you--"

Peter, looking over Roman’s shoulder, watched the beacon vibrate intensely for a moment, then split in two.

Shit.

Two smaller lights now - one taking off for the chapel, the other making for the dorms.

"Well, that's some horror movie bullshit right there." Roman’s voice was high, cracking on the _shit_ in bullshit.

Peter shrugged. No use griping about something they were going to do anyway. "I'll take the dorms, you can take the chapel?"

Roman nodded. "Hey, remember what I said. About changing."

Peter was tossed momentarily back into Destiny's bedroom, Roman above him, the knowledge of the last time they'd touched, the last time they'd been in a bedroom together, between them - along with every ugly thing they'd done to each other. What had he been going to say to Roman then? Going to do to him?

Peter couldn't remember now, so he shrugged again and clomped through the snow toward the dorms.

The beacon didn't wait for him as it had for Roman, and he had to almost sprint after it to trace it to a dark door. The beacon passed through silently through to the other side; Peter had to break in.

The building was clearly not in use as living quarters anymore -- dusty and stacked with old desks and ratty mattress. Despite this, there was something of Hemlock High to its odour. Stale chalk and old sweat, fine wood that had begun to decay. Hard to tell if that was recent, or just an echo - the smell ingrained in the very walls from years back.

There was no light in there but the beacon, which led him unerringly up a level. 

Here there were lights -- fluorescents buzzing on the white ceiling, an overhead landing strip that directed him down an antiseptic hallway of white doors closed against white walls.

He was conscious of the clunking of his boots, the trail of melting snow he was leaving on the white linoleum. The beacon was not -- it zipped along as confidently as a dog let off its lead.

Let alone, Peter was just now starting to worry about how and why a beacon designed to reunite blood with blood could lead away from one of the sources. His mind conjured nightmare scenes of Nadia’s small shredded body, dissected by Spivak and his ilk. But Destiny would have felt it if Nadia was dead, he knew. And this blood ritual, like all blood rituals, was really a life ritual. _The blood is the life_ , he reminded himself.

That echo, in Destiny's voice more than his own, became a mantra as he continued down the hall. Every so often, the beacon would pause for a second and vibrate again. Peter worried that it might split off into another two, but it didn’t, just floated on until the farthest door on the left.

Again the beacon passed through the door, but this one, when Peter checked, was mercifully unlocked.

Inside: an alarmingly spotless, modern laboratory - the kind he’d expect to find in the White Tower. Everything gleamed — steel and glass — including three fridges on the far wall, in front of which the beacon vibrated frantically.

Inside: rows upon rows of tiny vials, something — all frozen and full of murky liquid.

The beacon had led him here, to these thousands of miniature glass containers. Peter didn’t need to know exactly what they were to know what he had to do. The fridges fell easily, the cords that branched them to the wall snapping under their weight, and inside, like the ringing of a thousand bells, the vials shattered.

The sound was deafening in the deadened quiet of the empty dorms. Peter felt sure it must be audible from outside the building. If Spivak wasn’t already in the building, he would be soon.

Its purpose fulfilled, Peter’s half of the beacon vibrated with relief - and then blinked out of existence in a single tendril of smoke. Peter had the bizarre urge to thank it, but Destiny was the one who deserved his gratitude, and anyway there was no time for that.

On the way out of the dorms, he careened down the hall. No use for stealth now - all he had to do was get to the chapel - to Nadia, and Roman, as quickly as possible.

Suddenly, the fluorescent lights along the hall began to tick off, one long bulb after the other. The darkness encroached in segments and Peter, despite himself, slowed his steps.

Out of the dark stairwell, Peter's only way out, emerged a hulking, hunched figure. The sloughing grey-scaled flesh of Spivak was revealed only by the diffused moonlight – red, but not full, it reminded him.

When the lights above Peter ticked off, when Spivak lumbered toward him in the dark, Peter itched to turn. With that waning moon, though, the wolf was asleep, and the vargulf, when he sought it, seemed docile and uninterested.

Peter prodded it as he spoke to Spivak, "So you're the dragon everyone's been going on about?"

Spivak stepped under the one remaining light, a chuckle rumbling in him, and intoned: "I am no Dragon. I am a mere servant. You think the Dragon exists for this? For any reason other than reign and ruin? You fool, you beast."

Under the fluorescence, it was finally clear that this was not Spivak - not the man anymore, if it ever had been. The heavy folds of scaling skin recalled the creatures young Peter had peered at when Lynda snuck them into the zoo - the kind of creature that slept in the day and slithered about at night.

And somehow it was speaking: "As has been ordained and orchestrated since the first of his blood foretold it, the Dragon took the flesh of his own sister to strengthen his line before he came into himself."

The Spivak creature paused, as though leaving space for rebuttal. When Peter said nothing, struck by the implied confirmation that Olivia was to blame for Letha, it made a grotesque sound in the back of its throat. "It does not trouble you? The Dragon raped and ravaged his way to the throne and we honour him for it. We will feed him the blood of his blood and he will grow ever stronger."

_Blood of his blood._

_Nadia._

Peter understood then that Spivak was baiting him to anger, that it must know about the wolf, that it must want him to turn. He remembered, too, his promise to Roman.

But the vargulf roared through Peter now - any human memory or understanding was nothing in the face of that roar, full of blood and righteous fury. The vargulf fought its way out of Peter, and in a rush; a leap, tore its way through the scaled flesh of the creature’s throat.

The vargulf felt its teeth click together between the ligaments it shredded and knew it was good. The sweet fire of life filled the vargulf and it opened its maw to howl in triumph.

Then the burning began.

-

The first time it happened to someone Peter knew, he was 10, and didn't know for sure the wolf would come.

The way people had said Viktor's name changed, from admiring and awe-filled to hushed and anxious. Then they stopped saying his name at all.

Peter thought of how Nicolae was like Viktor, and how everyone said Peter was like Nicolae. He picked at his dinner and gnawed on the loose skin around his thumbnail when he got hungry later.

It had been an unseasonably warm October and the wind was gentle, but the leaves still had to fall. He could smell their urge to do it in the air, earthy and pungent, when Nicolae called him over to the fire that night.

Once Peter was settled in the chair next to him, Nicolae set about roasting a hot dog on a stick. He stared into the fire and said, his voice like gravel, as always: "It's not only Viktor. Everyone has a vargulf - even those who don't have the wolf in them. It's different for everyone. You just need to know what wakes it."

Nicolae turned the hot dog steadily over the fire.

"Viktor woke the vargulf and lost himself. To be safe, you only need to know yourself - what wakes the vargulf. Just be honest with every part of yourself."

It had seemed then, Iike the easiest thing in the world. Lying to other people - people who weren't Lynda and Nicolae, at least - was easy as breathing. He'd never even thought of lying to himself.

"For most men, it's fear that wakes the vargulf. The fear is a warning - you shouldn't fight it but neither should you feed it."

Nicolae drew the hot dog out of fire and blew on it experimentally, hacked a cough, and then jabbed the stick in Peter's direction.

"Okay? Here, boy."

Peter seized the hot dog, which was still piping hot and promised to burn his mouth, but he couldn't wait. He was starving.

-

Peter was tossed back into the howling pain of his own body. He writhed senselessly for a moment more, naked and prone, the venom sizzling on his skin - before he was able to his face towar the white figures above him.

They shuddered into focus - three hulking men in white trousers and shirts, the same sickly smile on all their faces.

"I got it," Peter tried to say, "it's finished," but all that came out was a strangled moan

Through the fog of agony, he twisted his neck enough to confirm. Sure enough, there lay the Spivak monster, its grey flesh torn and oozing the same bile that now blistered Peter's skin.

_So why didn't they care?_

Peter thought of getting up and running, or at least crawling away from them, but when his body twitched minutely in that direction, the largest of the men pressed a white loafer firmly down on his chest.

Peter howled. Not the howl of the wolf; the howl of a man in inarticulate agony. The only things mitigating the pain and keeping him sensible were the satisfaction of a good kill and the hope that Roman had found Nadia.

The bald man with his foot on Peter's tender chest smiled without showing any teeth. "Only the bite of a dragon can end it, beast."

The pressure released as the bald man turned to his colleagues. Peter sucked in air, his chest on fire.

"Bind him for the altar," the bald man said, and his two lackeys pulled out a heavy set of silver chains.

He turned then, and finally smiled at Peter with all his shiny white teeth. "A sacrificial beast."

Then the tip of his patent white loafer struck Peter in the temple and all was darkness.

The sound of Roman's voice.

Peter lurched first into consciousness in a high-ceilinged, dark-wooded room. A church?

Then came the feeling.

He was cold and in no small amount of pain - and he was chained, naked, on a velvet altar at the front of a fucking church.

It smelled like a church, at least, and had the bones one, but something was off. He thought suddenly of the old church where he'd hidden from the police, where they'd brought blood-mad Christina, and where he'd called up the vargulf for the first time. He thought of Letha.

There were no crosses, no virgin Marys, halos. Craning his neck, all Peter saw was what looked like a small velvet tent off to his right with a cradle under it, Nadia squirming inside. There was a circle of what he doubted was red paint streaked sloppily on the wall behind him, and--

Halfway down the aisle, facing down a full congregation of white-clad psychopaths, was Roman Godfrey.

Roman seemed uninjured, as far as Peter could tell from the clean lines of his black wool coat, broken only by his hands shoved in his pockets.

"So that's the sales pitch?" Roman’s diction was perfect, each word tossed louchely out of his mouth - not slurred together as his speech became in moment of high emotion - which was most of the time when it came to Roman. He was either bored or carefully affecting boredom.

_Not injured, not captured. Not fighting._

Something small and desperate began to burn at the bottom of Peter's stomach.

The embers of panic.

The bald man was speaking, his eyes fixed on Roman and bright with fervour. Peter could make out beads of sweat on the back of that shiny pate. He had donned a white cape at some point. He looked fucking ridiculous. Peter ached to rip his throat out.

"We are the Order of the Dragon, and we have prepared for your coming,” the seated congregation chanted in unison.

Roman spun on his heel to face the bald priest, who stood on the edge of the altar. He made his way slowly down the aisle, his steps long and steady. _Stalking_ , Peter's hindbrain yelped.

"All is in service of your coming. We are the Order of the Dragon, and you are--"

Roman stopped at the edge of the altar. His eyes flicked past the bald priest but didn't seem to catch on Peter. He looked distant, powerful, hungry.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm the fucking dragon," Roman said, and then leaned down and ripped the priest's throat out with his teeth.

The arterial spray splattered across the front pew of worshippers, their rapt faces and white clothes streaked in red.

One lucky woman, sat near the centre of the aisle, had been mostly spared.

Peter watched as Roman, his jaw not yet fully snapped back into place and drooling blood, bent his body halfway to catch his eyes on hers.

"Where's Spivak?" Roman grinned a hideous, distended grin.

When she shook her head fervently, Roman made a guttural sound in the back of his throat and then spat the excess blood and spittle onto her downturned face. It hit the high bone of her cheek and then dripped onto the tiled marble below with a splat.

" _Run._ "

When she didn't move, Roman repeated himself in a roar that sent the entire congregation scrambling. When the church had emptied of the Order, he made for Peter, strung up on the altar, at last.

"I told you not to fucking turn," Roman said, his face bloody and his hands nervous, dancing around Peter's chest, trying to support him without touching a burn. “How’d you—“

Peter groaned as the chains came off. "I killed Spivak. Something in its... blood turned me back, I think."

At that, Roman's big hands came up to rest on Peter's cheeks, just for a second.

"Pants," Peter croaked. "And Nadia.”

This close, Peter could see a freckle of blood on the bridge of Roman’s nose, at the edge of his right eyebrow.

“Nadia and pants,” Peter repeated.

Roman cursed and moved away, scrambling over to the manger. He bent for a moment over the cradle, a long shadow curved over the velvet tent, obscuring Nadia from Peter's view. His stomach lurched.

"She seems okay," Roman called without looking away from the cradle.

Peter was just envisioning crawling across the altar entirely nude when Roman turned to the priest he'd slaughtered and pulled a pair of bloodstained trousers right off the body.

He tossed them at Peter's bare feet without quite looking - there was, impossibly, a hint of colour high on his cheekbones - and gathered Nadia, who Peter saw now was fast asleep, within his coat.

"Let's go the fuck home," Roman said.

"Fuck yeah," Peter began as he slid the stained trousers on, eyeing the dead man's white loafers. Then he froze. "Wait - what about Miranda?"

 

They found Miranda trussed up the garage after a good 20 minutes of searching, during which Roman grew more and more put out.

Despite being frozen half to death and visibly underfed, Miranda greeted their rescue with a barrage of insults so creative that she could only have spent her months of captivity preparing for just that moment.

"Not even a thank you?" Roman sniped as they all stood in awkward silence on the back lawn of the Order's headquarters, Miranda having spewed the last of her epithets. "We saved your life."

Miranda chuckled thinly. "You want a thanks? Okay.” She marched up to Roman and struck him once across the face, hard enough that it clearly hurt them both, and then turned to Peter.

He flinched, admittedly.

"Destiny won't say this to you because she loves you, but I sure as shit don't so: this thing with Roman, which was obvious to everyone but you from space, is a toxic feedback loop. It's a... dying snake eating its own poisoned tail--"

Miranda’s words spilled out in a rush until she had to pause for a second to draw a panicked-sounding breath.

"Best case scenario: you kill each other. Worst case scenario? You end the fucking world."

Roman's response was to spit blood onto the snow.

"I'm sorry," was all Peter said, but he mostly meant it. "We'll get you home. Roman's got a helicopter waiting."

The more Miranda laughed, the more unhinged it began to sound. "Oh, hell no. I'm not getting trapped in an enclosed space with space you two or your demon baby."

Miranda limped over to the hulking old pickup parked in the garage, leaned into the trunk and pulled out a wrench.

When she noticed them gaping at her, Miranda screamed "Bye fuckheads!" and then used the wrench to shatter the driver’s side window.

That was the point at which Roman sighed so heavily that the branches of nearby trees rustled.

"Shee-it," said Peter.

"Shee-it," Roman said, and began shrugging as effusively he could without disturbing Nadia, curled beneath his coat.

In short order, Miranda was in the cab and rifling beneath until the engine roared to life.

Roman and Peter made for the tree line.

Miranda's purloined truck caught up with them in seconds and she slowed as she passed them long-enough to call out, "I'd fucking run if I were you."

Then she was gone in a spray of white powder that caught Peter in the eyebrows and mouth. When it cleared, he could see the snow settling in clumps on the bloodied lapels of Roman's wool coat.

"What the fuck does—“ Roman's question was answered by a familiar, heart-stopping sound: the leathery flapping of wings.

The Spivak creature was dropping out of the sky so rapidly that it was more a smudge of horror than anything real.

"I thought you killed that fucking thing?"

"So did I."

They began to run.

Peter recalled the unmoved expressions on the faces of the Order members who'd found him with his snout wet with Spivak's blood, the smug way they'd intoned, "Only the bite of a Dragon can end it."

He chanced a look over his shoulder and it confirmed his fears - Spivak was gaining on them, fast. There was no way they were making it to the helicopter. "We've gotta stop and fight," Peter called.

Roman's footsteps faltered for a second, but he kept sprinting. "We can't. Nadia's not safe yet."

He looked back - the Spivak creature flapped ever closer. Roman cursed and then he was shoving Nadia into Peter's arms.

"Get her to the helicopter and if I'm not there in, like, 10 minutes, you take her and go!"

Peter hesitated, Nadia stirring in his arms and Spivak fast approaching. This was his chance - Destiny's dinnertime suggestion rang in his head. No fight, no flight. A clean break.

Then Roman screamed into his face. "Fucking go!"

The next time Peter looked over his shoulder, Roman had turned and was squaring off as the creature descended. He was a long, dark shape in the pre-dawn of the forest, and something in Peter cracked as he kept running.

 

Pryce was where they'd left him: alert and strapped into the pilot's seat of a helicopter parked in the middle of a dirt road - as they'd been gone minutes and not hours.

"There's our girl!" Pryce shouted over the propeller's whir as Peter opened the passenger door. "Where's Roman?"

Peter didn't answer. The sight of the safety seat and tiny headphones had Roman prepared froze him on the spot, Nadia fussing a little as he held her with one hand cupping her head to cover her ears.

Whatever else, Roman was Nadia's father.

Peter shook himself - it had definitely been 10 minutes by now, and there was no sign of Roman - or Spivak, at least. 

He took the small pink headphones, shifting Nadia's white cap enough to fit them over her ears. Those eerie blue eyes of hers were improbably calm - he was more freaked out than her, and he could run and defend himself.

No one was coming.

Peter set her into the safety seat, taking his time to carefully check each buckle after he snapped them into place.

As he stood there, looking down at Nadia, an inhuman shriek tore through the air. Peter scanned the trees. Still nothing.

Then: a dull sonic boom, the sound of something huge and heavy following into snow. These sounds meant bad things for Spivak. They didn't scare Peter.

What scared the shit out of him was Nadia abruptly bursting into tears immediately after.

Peter stroked her impossibly soft cheeks, kissed the top of her little head, but she howled through it all. He knew what it meant: _Whatever else, Roman was Nadia's father._

Peter closed the passenger door, pulled it to make sure it was properly closed. He walked around to the other side, behind Pryce, and opened that door.

Then he shouted to be heard over the propellers; a hoarse, guttural "Wait!"

And Peter ran into the woods.

 

In the woods, Peter came upon a horror show.

Sprinting and stumbling through the snow, his feet frozen solid in those fucking loafers, the sight brought him up short.

Chunks of snow had melted away and there was only the sizzling grey blood-venom left in its place. Several trees had been felled, one cracked clean in half but still standing. At the centre of it all - the source of the blast - was the Spivak creature, its scaly flesh already shriveling. Dead.

Peter caught his breath, but lost it as soon as he realized what Spivak's corpse had collapsed on top of - amidst the venom, huge wood splinters, decaying monster, and an enormous pool of blackish blood that Peter was just now noticing - he could just barely see Roman's outstretched hand.

Pale, impossibly big, universe-spanning, set on that delicate, boyish wrist. Like a pup who hadn't yet grown to full size. Peter would have recognized that hand anywhere.

The ice in his feet traveled through his blood then, up his body to his heart and throat. Roman wasn't moving. It seemed impossible that anyone could survive all this, but equally impossible was the thought that Roman Godrey could die. In the woods, with no witness. Without Peter.

He approached the Spivak husk and summoned whatever remaining strength the wolf and vargulf had to offer him, heaving the corpse off Roman's body. His muscles were still trembling with the strain when he looked down at the uncovered ruin of Roman's chest. The deep shreds across his throat and ribs were still bubbling. The blackened blood seemed to be seeping from the wounds. His face was grotesquely pale, the veins in his eyelids stark against the thin skin there. His chest didn't rise or fall; he wasn't breathing.

Every part of Peter wanted to howl. No one could survive this.

Naturally, then, Roman's eyes flew open.

He gasped hugely, lurched up toward Peter, who was rendered immobile by shock, and then fell back onto the filthy ground with a cry.

Peter dropped to his knees next to Roman. There was so much - he pressed his forehead to Roman's, put his shaking hands to Roman's face, squeezed his eyes shut.

He could feel Roman trembling against him, and opened his eyes to find him laughing silently, his shoulders heaving.

"What's so fucking funny?"

"For a second there, I thought you were an angel."

Peter looked at his dirty white loafers, his white sweater and trousers streaked with blood. He felt his own wild urge to laughter.

"What's so fucking sad?" Roman countered, impossibly sharp for someone who’d just been torn apart.

Peter pressed the heels of his hands hard into the sockets of his eyes for a moment. They came away wet. "You were fucking dead.”

He still half looked it.

"We gotta go, Pryce is still waiting, but I don't know for how long."

"Nadia--"

"She's safe with Pryce. C'mon, let's go."

It was a tough call which part of Roman to touch to hoist him up, but Peter settled for an arm low around his waist. It seemed like the least damaged part of him. They struggled upright together but almost immediately Roman's knees buckled.

All his weight went onto Peter as they lurched a few steps away from Spivak. The black ooze was still seeping out of Roman's chest as he listed forward, leaving a trail of darkness in the white snow. If anyone decided to chase them, they'd be easy to track.

They were just shy of the horror show clearing when Peter felt his own knees buckle under the weight of them both. He sought any reserves of strength from the wolf, the vargulf even, but there was nothing. He hadn't had a proper night's sleep since Letha's death. Spivak had taken everything he had left.

Peter was so goddamned exhausted.

He managed to control their fall enough that Roman's back was propped up against a tree, but he couldn't prevent the rag-doll splay of Roman's legs or the pained sound that fell out his mouth as Peter dropped him.

"Fuck, I'm sorry. I can't," Peter gasped. He bent at the waist, heaving, his hands braced on his knees. Roman nodded drunkenly.

A better person would've urged Peter to go on without him. Roman didn't do that, but neither did he beg Peter to stay.

That was Roman, wasn't it? Never all the way good, but trying to better, managing it sometimes.

Peter thought of Destiny again. The road, Pryce, and Nadia were probably a 20 minute walk away. It would be slow going, but alone, it was possible.

He slumped down next to Roman. They both did nothing but breathe and ache for a long moment. Then Peter said: "How'd you manage to kill Spivak?"

Roman's shoulder twitched against his in an approximation of a shrug. "The priest guy just straight-up told me how."

 _Only the bite of Dragon can end it,_ Peter recalled. He snorted. "What the fuck is up with these bad guys telling us their entire plans?”

"I think he was just gearing up to it. Probably could've learned more but I got bored. And hungry." Roman's eyes were listing shut. Peter curled his hand around Roman's neck to feel his pulse fluttering weakly. He was alive, but he was dying.

"They knew about Letha, about what Olivia," Peter said urgently. He shook Roman by the neck slightly to get this attention. Roman just slumped over onto his shoulder, but at least his eyes were open and focused on Peter. "Those fuckers knew more than I did. You got to start telling me this shit man. All of it.”

Roman's eyes widened. "Everything?" he asked, mouth contorting in alarm.

It must be exhausting, Peter thought, to spend so much of his life afraid. What a desperate thing Roman Godfrey was. Peter's traitorous heart swelled with pity and a fierce affection.

He remembered sitting with Nicolae by the fire as a boy, learning what could wake the beast in someone. Fear had woken Roman's monster, just like Viktor’s and Christina's, but it wasn't like that for Peter’s.

The vargulf in him had been awoken by desperation, yes, but more than anything, by the maimed corpses Christina had left strewn through the woods, by Chasseur and the policemen who'd hunted him down. By the violence of it all.

"No, Roman, not everything," Peter said. Roman was callous, spoiled, and petty, with poor impulse control. Peter knew all that already - he didn't need the details. "Just all the Upir shit. Whatever it is, I can handle it."

Peter felt the partial truth of this as he said it-- the beast in him loved the monster in Roman, and it was undeterred by bloodshed. Peter would have to sort the rest out for himself. "Anything I don't know is something someone's gonna use against us. Spivak's people, Pryce... Olivia..."

"I ripped her fucking tongue out with my teeth for what she did," Roman slurred, "Ate it. Bitch."

"Okay." Peter said slowly, reconciling the fierce love he felt for Lynda with his own hatred for Olivia. He found he could, in fact, handle it. "Did you - kill anyone?"

Roman snorted. "Besides myself?"

Peter looked away. Destiny had said that was the only way for Roman to go full Upir was suicide, but to think about the reality of it now, as Roman was bleeding out on his shoulder, was something else.

"This hobo. It was, uh, before you-- Back when I was new at things." Roman's voice was pained, though that could've been from the seeping, poisoned wounds. "I tried to stick to assholes, but I was just so fucking hungry all the time. I lost control. Just once."

Just once. As if Roman's life wasn't more like a series of desperate grabs at control.

"Did you ever use it on me-- the Upir mind control shit?"

"No, _no_. I'd never--" Roman’s chest rattled as he sighed. "I wanted to once. I saw you with Letha and I just--"

It came to Peter then - last year, Roman crashing the car the same night he and Letha first got together, Roman prone and hollow for weeks on end. "Put yourself in a coma instead."

"Well, not on purpose," Roman said, abashed.

"So that's everything? Letha because of Olivia, then Olivia, then yourself, then the homeless guy? No one else who'll come back to bite us in the ass?"

The reflexive _us_ gave Peter pause - and Roman too, if his belated "No one" was anything to go by.

"If you're lying to me, you know I'm gonna rip your fucking heart out myself, right?”

"Yeah." Roman's laugh was delayed-- breathy and haphazard. "You've done it once already."

Peter's hand was still on his neck, on his pulse. It fluttered against his palm. "Roman, there's only one way we're gonna get out of here."

"Pryce has some of his stuff for me in the helicopter, you can go--"

"We both know I won't make it back here in time. It's okay, you can-"

"No," Roman said, aiming for fierce and managing _drunken kitten_. “I won't do it."

"I'm telling you it's okay. Just take what you need."

"I can't," Roman said, voice thick with shame and blood. "I'm so hungry. I don't know if I'll be able to stop."

"You can. If you die here, who's going to look out for Nadia? I'd die for her and Pryce'll do his best, but you think we're a match for Olivia? Who'll stop her from taking Nadia?"

That did it - he could see the joints in Roman's jaw shifting gruesomely under the skin of his face - but when he leaned forward, his head flopped uselessly on his own neck.

It was up to Peter, then, to guide Roman Godfrey's mouth to his own neck, to hold it open against his skin until he felt the gruesome sensation of Roman's teeth distending against his skin there.

Roman bit down.

Peter had never given any thought to what Roman's victims felt, but now he knew. _Everything._

He felt the sharp slice of Roman's teeth through the skin of his neck, the cold seeping into the damp seat of his pants, the stripped bark of the tree against the back of his sweateer, the pumping of his blood out of his body and into Roman's.

His hand fell away from Roman's neck on pins and needles, but Roman didn't need the support anymore. His body wasn't even propped against the tree; it curled over Peter's as he drank.

The vargulf made a high, keening sound in his throat. Or did Peter? Did it matter? Was there really such a difference?

Maybe Viktor’s problem, Christina’s too, hadn’t been that they fed the vargulf, but that they’d been at cross purposes with it. In feeding it, they’d starved themselves - made themselves weak and the vargulf strong, so it overpowered them.

The vargulf wanted the Upir’s violence - an intrinsic part of Roman that was made to take life, that was taking Peter’s now. But he’d given it willingly - traded it for Roman’s because. He wanted Roman; his dry humour, his bad temper, his foul mouth, his throat-bearing vulnerability. How much he wanted Peter. And Peter could have him. Everyone could get what they wanted.

So, Peter knew, he wouldn’t starve the vargulf and he wouldn’t starve himself. They’d both grow strong, fed on Roman’s violence and his love, both of which he felt now, as Roman hardened against Peter’s hip, still drinking. Roman’s cock filling grotesquely with Peter’s blood. If he hadn’t been so faint - his vision swimming slightly now, his limbs tingling with blood loss - it would have driven Peter wild.

Black closed in around the edges of his vision, the top of Roman’s head, his hair matted with blood and dirt. Mouth still latched onto Peter’s neck, throat still filled with Peter’s blood. Peter thought, vaguely, of moving away from Roman’s teeth or of pulling Roman off him. He did neither; moaned Roman’s name. Once.

Roman froze instantly. He stopped drinking. Detached himself from Peter in jerky motions, as if pulled by strings. Caught Peter as he listed down into the snow, ragdoll-like. Lifted Peter up till they were both upright. His manic grin flashed in and out of Peter’s vision.

“I’ve never—“ Roman began, his voice shaky with awe. He was still hard. His face was a mess of blood - the priest’s, his own, Peter’s - his eyes bright and glassy as they fixed on Peter. He focused: “Christ, we’ve got to get you to Pryce, get moving.”

Peter didn’t. He watched the blood on Roman’s face gleam in the rising dawn and thought, absurdly, of the first time he’d seen that blood-red roadster. Peter smiled. _Everyone gets what they want._

“Peter,” Roman said, tenderly and then urgently: “Peter.” He shook Peter where he held him up by the shoulders. Peter shook. He couldn’t do anything else.

“Okay, I hope to fuck you don’t remember this,” Roman said, and then scooped Peter up, one arm under his knees and the other around his torso, like he weighed nothing. Through the haze, Peter considered mortification; rejected it. Roman began to jog lightly through the woods, moving into a sprint as the trees cleared.

Roman, who not an hour ago, had been dying, wasn’t even short of breath as he ran. Peter’s head bounced limply against his chest, his vision flickering until all around him was black and still.

-

Peter had no father.

When he was young, he never even thought to ask. When he was a little older, and playing with children whose fathers roared at them when they misbehaved, he asked and Lynda answered: "Your father is the moon."

That felt right to Peter, and so it settled matters until he made the mistake of repeating it to other kids. Lynda stuck to her story for years - it was one of the only things they'd ever fought about.

One night, Peter, 14 and alight with every frustration that came with the age, howled at his mother, his voice cracking: "Just tell me where he is so I can fucking go live with him, then!"

That stopped the fight, stopped Peter's heart - and his mother's too, if the way she dropped into her chair was any indication.

Lynda took a long pull from her beer.

"I'm your mother," she said. "And I'm your father. Nicolae is your father too. And Vince. And so is the moon."

"He didn't need us, so we don't need him. I love you enough for a mother, a father, and the moon combined."

Peter, hating his traitorous heart and foul mouth, dropped to his knees at his mother’s feet. He lay his head in her lap and began to sob, shaking, for a long time until he could say "I'm sorry" and "I love you." Lynda stroked his hair through it all.

It wasn't until after Letha, until they were haunting the roads, that Peter got the closest thing he'd get to an answer.

He sat, paralyzed with the agony of his loss, in the passenger seat of their beater, and Lynda offered it, unprompted. Like a glass of water on a bedside table, or a blanket you wake up to find draped over you as you slept. A gift.

"Your father didn't leave us," Lynda said evenly, her gaze on highway lines lit by their headlights. "We left him."

Peter's whole world shifted underneath him. His faceless father, always leaving him, had been a part of his self for years.

"Did he... hurt you?"

"Not in the way you mean. We hurt each other."

Peter's mind reflexively tried to imagine hurting Letha, and the image shot an arc of pain all through him. His eyes welled up. "Did you--"

"Love him? Yeah, like crazy. I'd never loved anybody that much... Until I felt you growing in me. It was the same for him but, he wasn't a kind person. We fed the bad parts of each other. That love was poison, you know. It was killing us slowly and I wanted to live.

For you."

It should have been a burden, maybe, that Lynda had given up her love for Peter, that Peter would never know his father because he couldn't love right, but it wasn't. Peter's cold soul was warmed then by the force of his mother's love. Her strength of will. _A gift._

"Thank you," he said, and touched her cheek, the back of her hand on the wheel.

His mother smiled and took one hand off the wheel to hold his. "For what?" She said. "Best thing I've ever done.”

That smile had been the first bit of scar tissue, whatever that had cracked in him at the loss of Letha slowly starting to heal over. If Lynda could do that for him, he could knit himself together. It wasn't the kind of gift you returned, or wasted.

Peter dozed in the passenger seat, his mother's hand still clasped in his. Her tuneless humming along to the low radio lulled him fully to sleep, and when it did he dreamt of the roadster.

-

Peter jerked the IV out of his arm as he sat up, gasping. Roman was there, crouched down, his hands on Peter’s stained knees.

“Hi, Peter,” Roman said steadily.

“Hi, Roman,” Peter said unsteadily.

Behind Roman, he could see the familiar smattering of trees, the back door with its concrete step. The helicopter had landed in Roman’s back yard.

“Nadia?” Peter asked, when he saw the safety seat next to him was empty.

“Sound asleep in her crib.” Roman stood, held out a hand, smirking a little: “Do you need—“

“Oh, fuck off.”

Peter staggered into the house himself. Roman would likely never let him live that fucking bridal-carry down as it was, he didn’t need to make things worse.

“Shee-it,” Peter said in the dim of Roman’s home as he surveyed the wreckage of their clothes. “We need a shower.” He made for the stairs.

When Roman didn’t echo him, Peter turned on the stairs. Roman was still at the bottom, looking up, his shoulders hunched. Desperate to reach out, embarrassed to do it. Peter extended his blood-stained hand impatiently. “Roman. I said, we need a shower.”

“Oh,” Roman said, and his smile spread as he took Peter’s hand.

In that huge, glass shower, steam curling around through the water that ran red around them, Peter kissed Roman. He kissed him till the water ran clear, until their fingers and toes pruned, until they brought each other off, too worn out to do much more than grind their cocks together. It was still overwhelming. Kissing Roman as he came, moaning Roman’s name into Roman’s mouth.

They half-dressed each other dazedly after, hair still wet, and fell together into Roman’s big, dark bed. Peter hadn’t ever thought he’d be back here. Now he didn’t think he’d ever leave.

-

They dreamt about Roman's father's car, about the early days, when they sped the roadster through wooded roads, whooping and howling.

In the dream, there was blood smeared across Roman's mouth as he grinned at Peter from the driver's seat. Peter leaned over and licked it off. 

It was the deepest sleep he’d had in months.

"I love that fucking car," Peter said when they woke, his voice a little muffled by Roman's shoulder. His head plopped against the pillow as Roman leaned away abruptly. There was a scraping sound, a jangling, and then a metal weight dropped on his bare chest. He opened one eye.

Roman flopped back down next to him. "It's in the garage."

"Roman," Peter said and his voice didn't sound the way he meant it to.

"My father was weak and paranoid. And he wasn't even really my father. I don't want it."

"Roman--"

"We're almost out of diapers. Take it. And don't buy any of that no-name shit either."

Peter grabbed the keys off his chest and heaved himself up. He didn't look over at Roman until he was dressed, and when he did, he was compelled to stop and really _look_.

Roman's body looked lazy and expensive, sprawled under silk sheets. He'd slung an arm over his eyes like he was going back to sleep, but Peter knew better. He sat back down on the bed, leaned over and drew Roman's arm from his face. As expected, Roman's eyes were alert, his cheeks a little pink. His mouth, still bruised-looking from the night before, was slightly open, and drawing quick breaths.

"Roman--" The sound of his own voice was so warm that it almost hurt to speak.

"Jesus Christ, say something else. Like you didn't scream that enough last night," Roman snapped, all nerves.

Instead, Peter put his hand on Roman's jaw, brought their mouths together. They kissed deeply, for long enough that it began to get uncomfortable and then Peter backed away reluctantly.

Roman groaned, turned his face into Peter's hand. Peter felt the smile growing on his own face and said, helpless, "Roman."

Roman smiled back.

-

It was one of those curious spring days, when it was so bright and clear that it seemed it should be warm. Peter hadn't been able to resist putting the top down as he tore down the road to town. He didn't howl, but it was a near thing. He pulled into the parking lot with his hair a mess, the tips of his nose and ears bright red.

He grinned at the boy boredly restocking diapers, at the butcher who picked out two huge, dripping steaks for him, at the cashier who accepted his ball of crumpled twenties with disdain. His ears still roared with wind from the car, his head with the bruises he'd left on Roman's chest, above his heart. He felt high and cock-sure, like he was getting away with something unbelievable.

He stopped short in the parking lot. There sat the same blood-red car, arrogantly parked, that he'd seen that first day.

And there he stood, small and grungy, coveting it.

But no. That wasn't him. It was a girl, long-haired and sleek in a leather trench, frozen in front of the roadster. Peter approached carefully. "Hey."

She startled anyway, spinning around, and Peter saw the skittish, cornered animal look on her face. She was pretty, fine-featured, Asian. She looked vaguely familiar.

"You're... Peter Rumancek, right?"

He hitched the jumbo pack of diapers up under his arm as he shrugged. "That's me."

"I remember you from school... Roman's... friend."

She didn't meet his eyes. Hers were fixed on the car. "Are you here together? I mean... I heard that you guys were..." She blinked and her eyes were hazy, unfocused. "Is Roman here?"

She was trembling a little. Peter could smell the blood dripping from the steaks in his bag. His stomach growled and he knew they'd eat them raw, facing each other over the kitchen island. "He's not. Did you need to see him?" He felt vaguely that he should help her but didn't know how. Or didn't really want to.

She blinked again— several times, so rapidly that it almost looked like a convulsion. "No, I... Sorry. I just saw the car and-- I dunno." She shook her hair back over her shoulder and straightened out. "Nostalgia." She shrugged, with the voice of someone who wants very badly to seem fine.

The girl checked her wrist and said, "Shit, I'm late. Gotta run." She wasn't wearing a watch.

That niggling feel that he should do something was still there so Peter offered "I'll tell him you say hey" to her receding back.

She froze her in tracks, but didn’t turn around. "Don't. Don't tell him. I don't even know what I--" She seemed to sway slightly on her feet and he almost reached out before he felt his phone buzz in his pocket.

Roman. Whatever arbitrary time he'd set for Peter to be back by before he could start worrying that Peter had left must have passed. He could feel the heat of Roman's insecurity in his pocket, his greediness, his love.

Indulgent and a little smug about standing there with some girl whose heart Roman probably broke, Peter pulled out his phone. _Nadia won't stop shitting_ , it read.

When he looked up again, the girl was staggering into a car and he watched as she peeled violently out of the parking lot.

He shook his head and texted back 4 shit emojis. He wasn't sure if he should mention the girl to Roman or not, but he could decide on the way home.

Peter got in his blood-red roadster and headed back to Roman.

 

-

 

_Such is the nature of evil. In time, all foul things come forth._

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from The National song "Sleep Well Beast", which contains the line "i'll still destroy you someday/ sleep well, beast." 
> 
> I repurposed a few lines of dialogue from season 3 and stole/bastardized a line from Richard Siken's "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out".
> 
> The opening quote/summary is something Lynda says in Hemlock Grove. The quote at the end is something Thranduil says in The Hobbit (LOL).


End file.
